Many aerial vehicles utilize one or more forms of redundant flight control systems to ensure the safe flight of the aerial vehicle. For example, many commercial airplanes utilize a Fly-By-Wire system that includes triple redundancy for all hardware resources: computing system, electrical power, hydraulic power, and communication. In this system, the flight control system is also redundant and includes three primary flight control computers, each flight control computer including an independent processor that computes flight commands that control the motors and/or adjustable surfaces to aerially navigate the aerial vehicle.
Existing redundant flight control systems often utilize three flight control computers, each of which includes an independent processor, so that the system is robust to a failure of one of the three flight control computers and is still able to safely navigate with a majority of the remaining flight control computers. Some systems have additional redundancy through the addition of additional independent processors. For example, some flight control systems may utilize more than three flight control computers, each having an independent processor. Other systems utilize multiple independent processors within each of the three flight control computers.
While additional independent processors increase the redundancy of flight control systems, they also increase aerial vehicle weight, require more space on the aerial vehicle, and consume more power. While not much a concern for larger aerial vehicles, such as commercial airplanes, for smaller aerial vehicles, such as unmanned aerial vehicles (“UAV”) that utilize electrical power, these increases have negative affects by, for example, reducing operational time, and decreasing the amount of additional payload that can be lifted by the aerial vehicle, etc.